Xbox 360 Multiplayer Mayhem
Had a nice holiday weekend in New Hampshire, Thursday to Sunday with very little family interaction. A few friends purchased an Elite and had 2 new black controllers, so they came over for a little split-screen on my 50′’. Now, with my brother letting me borrow The Orange Box and a rental of Call of Duty 4, I thought I had choices over the Goliath that is Halo 3. I was not correct in that assumption.
The Orange Box is really a great buy. 5 time wasters for the price of 1 never felt this nice, but I was more interested in the Pixar looking dudes then helping Dr. Freeman or whatever. Team Fortress 2 really is the best time I’ve had on Xbox Live. The different class abilities play out like rock/paper/scissors, and are nicely balanced. A camera telling me how and why I died made for a constructive addition, I just hope they release more then the standard 6 maps as a download.
Call of Duty 4 has a great multiplayer portion as well. Experience points earned online unlock different equipment/weapon options depending on your genre of choice, and several intuitive “perks” give players additional abilities. Blast enough people with the M16 and a scope or a grenade launcher is unlocked, and abilities include a stealthradar option, stronger bullet penetration and an after death ability called “Last Stand”, allowing you to pull a sidearm once you’ve been killed to exact instant revenge before you bleed out.
These two games offer stellar deathmatch options, only under certain conditions:
1. You’re home alone
2. You have Xbox Live Gold
Team Fortress 2 does not allow you to take a guest on XboxLive with you, No local matches either. Call of Duty 4 doesn’t allow guests, but it did have a local match option, allowing 4 of us to play 2 on 2(or free for all). Call of Duty made for a great weekend, but I couldn’t help but feel like we were playing PerfectDark on my N64, except they took away the bots. We kept going back to Halo 3 just so we could see some action.
Call me crazy, but these features seem like standard options for an XboxLive title. It was frustrating not sharing Team Fortress 2, even more so after I had personally hyped it to my friends, only to plug in and not “Jump In”. WTF
Posted by Erick - November 26th, 2007 -